SAN MARCOS: National grant contest ends with Discovery Elementary still in lead

A 45-day campaign to earn a $50,000 technology grant for
Discovery Elementary School in San Marcos ended Friday with some
last-minute drama and an encouraging final total.

It won't be official until sometime in January, but the school
was about 3,000 votes ahead in the national contest when voting
ended Friday.

The Clorox Co. sponsored the contest, which offered a $50,000
grant to the school that could solicit the most votes on its
behalf. About 1,600 schools were in the contest.

It was hard not to notice Discovery's campaign drive in the past
month.

A team spearheaded by two parents and two teachers was in the
city's holiday parade, at Cal State San Marcos, at the local
bowling alley, and outside grocery stores.

Cars painted with reminders to vote ---- people could send in
one text and one online vote each day ---- for the school seemed to
be on every road and every parking lot. People could send in one
text and one online vote each day.

"It was amazing how many people had heard of it," parent Linda
Knowlton said about the reaction she received when campaigning in
the final hours of the contest.

With the Discovery team promoting the contest even before it
began, the school entered in first place when voting began October,
and it held a healthy lead over the following month and a half.

On Dec. 4, about 130 people holding signs and singing an
original jingle about the contest marched in the San Marcos Holiday
Parade, and the group brought home the Founder's Trophy for most
creative use of music.

Discovery led the second-place school by about 10,000 votes for
a time, and Principal Dan Trujillo said campaign organizers felt
confident that their lead would hold.

Last Thursday, however, a school that had been in third place
surged to second by submitting about 10,000 votes in one day,
Trujillo said.

"About three weeks ago, during Thanksgiving break, they really
turned it on," Trujillo said. "They were getting a thousand votes
more than we were."

Adding to Discovery's anxiety, the voting period was extended by
24 hours on Thursday, the day many people believed they would cast
their last votes for the school.

The team had been pacing its campaign to end Dec. 8, the day a
countdown clock on the official website showed the contest
ending.

About 2 p.m. Thursday, however, an additional 24 hours were
added to the clock, and Knowlton said Clorox later issued a
statement saying the clock had been wrong.

An end-of-the count celebration planned at a San Marcos
restaurant Thursday night was abruptly called off and people took
to the phones and the streets to tell others to keep voting one
more day.

"There was a handful of us at the movie theater, at Ralphs, at
the bowling alley," Knowlton said about the Friday push.

Discovery students who were visiting CSUSM on a field trip that
day took the opportunity to tell college students to vote for their
school, she said.

Knowlton said the contest website showed Discovery with about
125,000 votes at the end of Friday, about 3,000 votes ahead of
second place.

That count, however, did not include any text votes that came in
that day, and Knowlton said the actual count is scheduled to be
released Jan. 9.